Now I'm wondering if anything is happening on the display area, after hearing about new base stations and new controllers and all.
I mean because many people said they were holding out for the next generation, and I think the display's resolution was a factor more than the base station or even controllers, although from a real world use viewpoint those are rather crucial once you made the plunge into VR.

On a maybe related note: I hear qualcomm announced a new fingerprint sensor for phones that works under (thin) glass and aluminium and can also see your blood flow and measure your heartrate (all of it under water too), plus it can detect gestures some way away from it. so that last part makes me think that tech can be adapted to VR use too perhaps, it's a very fine and sensitive detection system that can work through materials, so perhaps that can be used to detect finger movement with controllers and perhaps they could even do something with the side-effect of being able to see the heartrate, although there I'm not sure if it would not be too intrusive for my taste.

Anyway, Valve, if you are listening, get your tech guys to get some samples to see what you can do with it. You gotta stay ahead after all.

Lots, but most of it is going to take time. Unlike the smartphone markets (millions of units per week) the VR market is much smaller (millions of units per year, at best), so cannot demand construction of an entire panel fab alone. Panel advances for VR (higher fill-factor, low-persistance driving mode, global refresh, etc) need to be rolled into the production line for 'normal' mobile device panels. Integrating developments a bit at a time is not going to be cost effective, so we will likely see minimal changes for a while, then suddenly a jump as a new process scale comes online with all the work integrated.

), plus it can detect gestures some way away from it. so that last part makes me think that tech can be adapted to VR use too perhaps

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It's capacitive sensing, which is what Touch uses already (and the Vive whatever-they're-going-to-eventually-call-it is going to use). We normally only see capactive sensing with extremely short threshold distances, but the field can extend quite far from the sensing surface if desired.

It's capacitive sensing, which is what Touch uses already (and the Vive whatever-they're-going-to-eventually-call-it is going to use). We normally only see capactive sensing with extremely short threshold distances, but the field can extend quite far from the sensing surface if desired.

Interesting! Ultrasonic has always been the 'black sheep' of tracking due to generally being... a bit ****. Super-prone to interference (jingling keys pumps out enough ultrasonic sound to screw with ultrasonic trackers. If someone has one of those little drive-about-and-avoid-the-walls robots like the ubiquitous robotic vacuum cleaners, try jingling your keys at it and watch it get very confused), not great for consistent and accurate ranging, very vulnerable to surface type and angle, and not much good in the rain. It's considered the cheap solution you use because budget won't stretch to a proper IR, magnetic, optical, or RF system.

Ultrasonic has always been the 'black sheep' of tracking due to generally being... a bit ****.

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I can confirm. Source: I own a PAX Power Glove controller for the Nintendo Famicom, which uses ultrasonic emitters on the corners of your display and a pair of microphones in the glove itself to track the glove's position and angle. And it's ****.

I'm sure that with clever processing or maybe a carrier of the right kind you can exclude such interference.
After all, everything will receive some kind of interference, but most of the time people are not aware because they took measures to alleviate the issue in a proficient manner. From WiFi to capacitive to IR to RADAR, it all has to deal with interference.
And just because some past attempts were cheap and sloppy doesn't mean it can't be done right.